BarkingUnicorn:I don't think I will ever understand why people spend so much money and time watching sports.

I love sports and I will tell you why. Humans are competitive by nature. We are survivors. Sports emulate our natural instinct to be the best. Professional athletes spend their entire lives pushing themselves to be the greatest. They are walking examples of physical perfection engaging in competition against each other at the epitome of their abilities.

There's an expression in football that on "any given Sunday" you never know what to expect. Anything can happen. Aside from the occasional crooked ref or fixed game, sports provide one of the most exciting, genuine spectacles of entertainment. When you go to a stadium or sit down on your couch to watch a game, you truly never know what to expect and it is that uncertainty where lies its beauty.

Calmamity:At least watching a nail rust might prove to have some value scientifically. The rest? Meh, go outside and kick a golf ball around on the ice yourself, why watch other people get paid to do it?

There's a lot more science to be found in a typical major sport than there is in a lump of iron oxidizing. Kinematics, biology, psychology, sociology, game theory, the list goes on.

Calmamity:At least watching a nail rust might prove to have some value scientifically. The rest? Meh, go outside and kick a golf ball around on the ice yourself, why watch other people get paid to do it?

Because no matter how much I practice kicking the golf ball around the ice, I do not possess the inate talent/ability to do it as well as the players in the National Ice Golf Ball Kicking Association (NIGBKA), so I want to watch real professionals do it as well as it can be done.

chevydeuce:Calmamity: At least watching a nail rust might prove to have some value scientifically. The rest? Meh, go outside and kick a golf ball around on the ice yourself, why watch other people get paid to do it?

Because no matter how much I practice kicking the golf ball around the ice, I do not possess the inate talent/ability to do it as well as the players in the National Ice Golf Ball Kicking Association (NIGBKA), so I want to watch real professionals do it as well as it can be done.

Calmamity:At least watching a nail rust might prove to have some value scientifically. The rest? Meh, go outside and kick a golf ball around on the ice yourself, why watch other people get paid to do it?

Because the people getting paid to do it are getting paid to do it because they're really damn good at it.

Calmamity:At least watching a nail rust might prove to have some value scientifically. The rest? Meh, go outside and kick a golf ball around on the ice yourself, why watch other people get paid to do it?

It's called "having fun." Sometimes, people do it for entertainment.

And this. The entire post is dead-on, but this sentence is what keeps me coming back:

umadbro:sports provide one of the most exciting, genuine spectacles of entertainment.

The problem with Bowling as a sport which makes it different than all other sports is that it has upper limits for how good you can be. Once you get your aim, spin, and form down pat, you can hit that strike 9 times out of 10. Granted, it takes a long time and a lot of skill to perfect it, but the guys competing in the PBA are all in the upper echelons of Pro Bowlers, and are, for the most part, all about as good as you're ever going to be. It's just not exciting to watch Bowling on TV when you know the score is going to end up being like 286 to 294. With any other sport, you can continually improve your ability infinitely, but with bowling not so much. Once you can bowl that 300, or close enough to it, on a fairly regular basis, then you're basically done.

Oh look, I'd love to stay and chat for longer but I see a new documentary on 15th century Chilean horticulture is available on Netflix. Enjoy your balls of baskets or whatever that thing is called tonight.

Di Atribe:chevydeuce: /if it doesn't snow at least 12" a year in a metropolitan area, it shouldn't have a farking hockey team

Why not?

Because it dilutes the product if a large portion of the population in the surrounding area don't give two farks about your team....The teams biatch because nobody pays attention to their team...well no shiat Mr. Phoenix Coyotes owner! It's farking Phoenix!

At my level of fan (which is a fair bit of the audience), there's substitution effects the more everything becomes about millions and millons of $. I started watching my local MLS team (actively enough to go to several games a year) because they were free on an antenna. I have no clue who's playing for my local baseball team because they're cable-only. Now that NCAA bowl games are entirely ESPN... I just don't watch them. If there's lacrosse or aussie-rules or tennis or whatever... I'll watch it instead.

chevydeuce:Di Atribe: chevydeuce: /if it doesn't snow at least 12" a year in a metropolitan area, it shouldn't have a farking hockey team

Why not?

Because it dilutes the product if a large portion of the population in the surrounding area don't give two farks about your team....The teams biatch because nobody pays attention to their team...well no shiat Mr. Phoenix Coyotes owner! It's farking Phoenix!

Actually, it's Glendale. Were the Coyotes located in Phoenix/Scottsdale/Tempe, they would be much better off.

PowerSlacker:chevydeuce: Di Atribe: chevydeuce: /if it doesn't snow at least 12" a year in a metropolitan area, it shouldn't have a farking hockey team

Why not?

Because it dilutes the product if a large portion of the population in the surrounding area don't give two farks about your team....The teams biatch because nobody pays attention to their team...well no shiat Mr. Phoenix Coyotes owner! It's farking Phoenix!

Actually, it's Glendale. Were the Coyotes located in Phoenix/Scottsdale/Tempe, they would be much better off.

I actually did not know that - I do know that the Tampa Bay Rays have a similar issue; by the time you get from Tampa down to the stadium you could have driven to Orlando.

chevydeuce:Because it dilutes the product if a large portion of the population in the surrounding area don't give two farks about your team....The teams biatch because nobody pays attention to their team...well no shiat Mr. Phoenix Coyotes owner! It's farking Phoenix!

Absolutely nothing you said has anything to do with the climate of the team's home.

Calmamity:At least watching a nail rust might prove to have some value scientifically. The rest? Meh, go outside and kick a golf ball around on the ice yourself, why watch other people get paid to do it?

I can sit around listening to myself play guitar, which I do at a mediocre level. Why would I bother going out and spending money to see a talented live blues band?

PowerSlacker:chevydeuce: Di Atribe: chevydeuce: /if it doesn't snow at least 12" a year in a metropolitan area, it shouldn't have a farking hockey team

Why not?

Because it dilutes the product if a large portion of the population in the surrounding area don't give two farks about your team....The teams biatch because nobody pays attention to their team...well no shiat Mr. Phoenix Coyotes owner! It's farking Phoenix!

Actually, it's Glendale. Were the Coyotes located in Phoenix/Scottsdale/Tempe, they would be much better off.

Glendale is ~20 miles from downtown Phoenix and maybe 30-40 from Scottsdale/Tempe (going off memory of when I lived there 20+ years ago)....if you're major league sports franchise can't create enough excitement to attract fans from that relatively short distance, you might want to rethink your business plan (like having an ice hockey team in a farking desert).

chevydeuce:Di Atribe: chevydeuce: /if it doesn't snow at least 12" a year in a metropolitan area, it shouldn't have a farking hockey team

Why not?

Because it dilutes the product if a large portion of the population in the surrounding area don't give two farks about your team....The teams biatch because nobody pays attention to their team...well no shiat Mr. Phoenix Coyotes owner! It's farking Phoenix!

In what way is the product diluted? A badly run business will probably shut down, a correctly run one probably will not. The level of snow and ice that naturally occurs has very little bearing on the economic viability of, for example, the Los Angeles Kings. The ice that they play on does not happen naturally and has to be maintained by artificial means (as is true of all professional hockey arenas, even in snowy areas) and yet the people still show up. Your argument is tantamount to "Los Angeles shouldn't get a football team because they have to water their lawns."